


Algorithms

by drelfina



Series: What happened after Manila [2]
Category: Bourne Legacy (2012), James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Multi, Q sucks at human, implied flirting, mentions of pairings but really pretty gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 18:25:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drelfina/pseuds/drelfina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MI6 doesn't get Aaron Cross - James Bond fails to convince him. </p><p>Because MI6 neglected Marta Shearing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Algorithms

Q isn't surprised. 

He hadn't _expected_ it, because Bond always gets the mission agenda accomplished, always finishes the mission no matter what weird blocks are in his way, no matter how many women he has to screw to get there, but he isn't surprised when Bond reports that the asset hadn't accepted MI6's offer. 

Q had seen the news, himself, and he should have expected that the girl would be important. 

He just... sometimes Q doesn't get it. He understands lust, he's felt it himself, sometimes, and can imagine that a lot of men, and a lot of women, too, can feel it magnitudes of strength stronger. Bond was an example of it, of how lust can addle a woman's mind enough to let slip something, enough to get her to flip. 

By sheer power of Bond's fucking cock, and the lust he embodies, he's flipped assets and brought home the mission objective that no other agent had managed because of the way Bond knew how to play up his sex appeal. 

Q steepled his fingers and studied the somewhat blurry security camera of Marta Shearing. Intelligent. Brilliantly so, a PhD in one of the hardest fields of virology that Q's own biochemical assistants was in conniptions about. Attractive enough, Q supposed, because he'd run her face through a scanner and it had spat out that she had high enough facial symmetry, and yet just enough asymmetry so as not to seem 'fake', which ranked her as Fairly Attractive, by his algorithm.

But what was it, he wondered, that made Aaron Cross go crazy for her? By all records that Q had been able to unearth, she had merely been one of the scientists who had viralled Cross out of chemical dependency, and had managed to do it under circumstances that might be considerably challenging. Still, she had experimented on him - and once they had made land in Manila, Cross and Shearing had parted ways - Q had assumed that it was out of gratitude for saving his life that Cross hadn't killed her, that he'd picked a non-lethal way of disentangling them. 

Gratitude, Q understood. Tit for tat, quid pro quo, Q could understand that - that was logical. Logic was very simple, even if it might be... too simple, but the beauty of logic was that there was a logical, universal progress. A = B, B=C thus A is equal to C. She had saved him from going into withdrawal, hence he had set her up in a small safe house and left instead of killing her. She had fixed what experiments had done to him, he had spared her life. 

A equals to C. 

But now, Bond was reporting that Cross was returning to New York, instead, because Shearing had ended up in Stark's clutches. 

Granted, MI6 would be rather bothered by that - Shearing had been involved with the makings of mind-controlled super-soldiers, in an agency that had been involved with Bourne, who was a very, very touchy subject in a lot of circles. 

But for Cross to be concerned? 

He could have requested the woman terminated. 

But he hadn't mentioned her at all during Bond's talks, which Q had assumed to mean that he wasn't concerned with her, but it turned out that she was vitally important. 

Q frowned, harder, switched to the next picture. 

"I knew that '6 was very into the 'need to know' basis, and while this isn't the first time that lack of information meant a mission went tits up, I feel like you'd been holding things back from me, Quartermaster." 

Q twitched, twisted around and narrowly avoided spilling his keyboard onto the floor. 

Bond leaned against the counter, watching him. "There a reason why you didn't tell me about the good Doctor? Because I would have gone for her first, and with that pretty bird in hand, Cross would have come easily. And-" Bond held up a finger, and Q shut his mouth, "don't tell me that it was on M's orders. Everything M knew about this, was from you, Quartermaster." 

Q frowned. pushed his glasses up his nose. "Do you really think she's pretty?" he said at last.

Bond blinked at him. "I beg your pardon?" 

"Or is she beautiful? is that why Cross was willing to throw both SHIELD and MI6 over for Stark?" Q turned back to his computer, and pulled up the still slightly blurred picture to the big screen. "My algorithms claim she is fairly attractive, but no more than that. And while many men have been flipped on a pretty face, surely she must be a raving beauty for him to forgive the crime of extreme intellect, and possible sociopathy, to be willing to go back to the US mainland for her." 

Bond was silent, and Q thought maybe he'd left. 

"... algorithms?" 

"yes, algorithms, do please keep up, Bond," Q said, a little irritated. "And studies have shown that hetereosexual males tend to be intimidated by women who are visibly smarter than they are - Doctor Shearing has a doctorate in one of the hardest fields in biochemistry; Aaron Cross, aka Kenneth Kitsom, barely graduated high school, no matter his enhanced intelligence now. Even fairly attractive cannot overcome that." 

Bond's voice was faint. And layered with something that might be amusement. "and possibly a sociopath?" 

"She experimented on human subjects," Q said. "perhaps she thought it was legal, I'm not sure how it's done in the USA, but if it's in conjunction with the CIA I highly doubt it's by the Geneva Convention. But that's not the point. from his point of view, Doctor Shearing doesn't see him as human, has a strong hand in keeping him dependent on drugs to enable him to be controlled. I assumed that her viralling him off the drugs and allowing him his independence resulted in him letting her live - and that was all." 

Bond snorted. 

Q turned around, frowning, and then frowned harder when he realised that Bond had come right up behind him. 

"Is that how you see it, little Quartermaster?" he asked. 

"Well of course," Q said, "How else can it be? Mere animal attraction wouldn't be able to overcome that sort of agent-level paranoia. You know how it is - lust can only be leveraged so far, you use it so often in your line of work." 

Bond huffed a laugh, and then pushed Q's glasses up his nose from where it'd slid down again, leaning in. 

"Lust, Quartermaster? is it so hard to think that it might be love?" 

Q blinked and stepped back, his back hitting his table. 

Bond followed, boxed him there. 

Q blinked again. "I.. how would love be involved in this? Love doesn't even naturally grow in that sort of situation, there's no... romance in it. "

Bond stared at him, and then laughed. 

"Algorithms. My god, and this is the kind of Quartermaster we have running Q-branch now. Algorithms and robots." 

"They are logical and makes more sense!" 

Bond just shook his head. "Ask M. Talk to M tomorrow, Q, lay it all out, and we'll see whether M agrees with your assessment." 

He brushed a finger through the hair at Q's temple, then he was gone. 

Leaving Q alone in the dark, confused at Bond's words, and worried about the way his heart had sped up.

**Author's Note:**

> So no porn, sadly. 
> 
> But we can assume that SHIELD and MI6 got wind of Aaron Cross, went marching right over to try and recruit him, and then Tony Stark swooped in and seduced Marta with shiny shiny lab space. So Aaron Cross dropped them like hot potatoes and hied himself to NYC. 
> 
> On the other hand, there probably was a nice threesome scene with Phil Coulson/Aaron Cross/James Bond, so we can all imagine that prettily. 
> 
> Also, Q has problems with human interactions. M wishes he could just toss him to Human Relationships 101.


End file.
